Diane Ravitch's blog
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DIANE RAVITCH'S BLOG
Student in San Antonio Objects to Electronic Tag
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 hour ago
A high school in San Antonio initiated a bizarre requirement this fall. Every student is expected to wear an electronic badge, presumably so the district knows how many students are in school and can track their movement. When a student objected on religious grounds to wearing the tag , the district suspended her. She is [...]
A Wonderful Article About Destructive Reforms
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 23 hours ago
The New York Times has a terrific article today by Michael Brick about the destructive policies that are called “reforms.” This is the first time in my memory that an article in the newspaper of record–albeit an opinion piece–has acknowledged that both political parties share the same demented and punitive approach and that their ideas [...]
What Happened to Local Control in Nashville?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 23 hours ago
Amy Frogge is a recently elected member of the Metro Nashville school board. She overcame a heavily funded opponent. She was named to our honor roll because she ran for school board to speak for parents and students. A lawyer, she takes her civic duty seriously. She believes in democracy, where the people closest to [...]
Karen Lewis Explains School Reform to the Chicago City Club
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
Karen Lewis bravely led the teachers’ strike in Chicago. This was not an action that she or the members of the Chicago Teachers Union took lightly. They deliberated, they debated and in the end, 90% of the members (and 98% of those who voted) supported the strike. Given their near unanimity, no one could make [...]
US DOE: Pennsylvania Can’t Inflate Charter Scores
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
The U.S. Department of Education ruled invalid Pennsylvania’s effort to inflate the scores of charter schools by treating them as local school districts. Here is a description of what state education secretary Ron Tomalis tried to do. The state’s charter-friendly education department had decided to treat charters as districts for purposes of NCLB scores, which [...]
Thanks to These Teachers!
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 day ago
A teacher and parent remembers the teachers who made a difference, the ones whose work is still remembered many years later: Thank you to the science teacher who let my son hand in elaborate hand-drawn cartoons explaining scientific processes. And to the history teacher whose project options allowed for students to act out interviews with [...]
Thanks to The Valiant Teachers of the Year in Acadia Parish
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
Just a few days ago, the Acadia Parish school board in Louisiana honored its teachers of the year. Each of its 27 schools selects a teacher of the year. Then, the district selects 3 teachers among the 27 as district winners: the Elementary T.O.Y, a Middle school T.O.Y., and a High school T.O.Y. to represent [...]
Be Sure to Thank Your Favorite Teacher
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
Happy Thanksgiving to all. I love this. It came from a post on August 28. It was inspired by an article written in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette by a copy editor. He wrote about his grandmother, who taught Neil Armstrong. Neil Armstrong never forgot her. Even when he became world-famous, he remembered his favorite teacher. [...]
I Give Thanks to You
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
On this day, I pause to thank you, the readers of this blog. I thank you because you care about children and the future of education. I thank you because you understand that the way we educate our children today shapes the society we will live in for decades to come. I thank you because [...]
When Gary Rubinstein Visited KIPP
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
Gary Rubinstein was among the nation’s earliest Teach for Merica teachers. Unlike most TFA, however, he became a career teacher. He now teaches at Stuyvesant High School in New York City. This is a very interesting report on a visit he paid to a KIPP school. Be sure to read te comments.
When Happy Talk Is Mandated
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
A reader in Texas responds to a post about the Dallas superintendent, who has sent out directions to schools to express themselves only in positive terms: This blog reminds me: we got a new superintendent in our district where I was the deputy superintendent. His FIRST act was to send out a memo to all [...]
Wake Up! Crisis in Michigan
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
Marcie Lipsitt writes from Michigan that the public must wake up to what their governor and legislature are doing to destroy public education: Finally the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News are reporting on Governor Rick “Nerd” (a disgrace to Dr. Seuss) Snyder and the Republican-led legislature’s plan to destroy public education in Michigan and [...]
In Which I Agree with Andy Smarick
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 2 days ago
Andy Smarick believes that public schools can’t be fixed or turned around. He thinks that the only way to solve their problems is to close them down and replace them with privately managed charters. Andy served on the board of a KIPP school, so he is confident that KIPP can do what no public school [...]
Michigan Parents Push Back Against Business Model
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
As I travel the country, I am often astonished to see how discouraged educators and parents are by the unproven schemes foisted on their schools by politicians. The worst of these schemes come from radical politicians who think that government should get out of the business of providing public education. They want education to be [...]
Dallas Administrator to Teachers: Tell Me How Happy You Are!
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
The new leadership of the Dallas Independent School District loves positive thinking. On this blog, we earlier reported that the superintendent, a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Avademy, had hired a public relations team to write power words and power phrases for the staff. If asked what they thought of the new administration, the [...]
Georgia DOE Blasts Cyber Academy, Threatens to Revoke Charter
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
The Georgia Department of Education issued a scathing report about the Georgia Cyber Academy for its handling of students with disabilities. The state DOE warned that the online charter school might lose its charter. The Georgia Cyber Academy is owned by for-profit K12. K12′s stock price dropped recently after news of the poor performance of [...]
More Charters Headed for Washington, D.C.
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
Washington, D.C. Is about to get a bunch of additional charters. Nexus Academy, part of Pearson’s Connections Academy, wants to open a school. So does K12, which is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Its stock price dropped this week after news broke about the abysmal performance of the Colorado Virtual Academy. Rocketship is [...]
Expose of Charter Corruption in The New Republic
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
Timothy Noah, a senior editor of The New Republic, has written a stunning expose of charter school corruption. He begins with Arizona, where the laws are so lax that self-dealing by charter executives is the rule, not the exception. Noah points out that 90 percent of charter operators are exempt from state laws requiring competitive [...]
Please Vote: Was Portland, Oregon, Right to Pass Up Race to the Top?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
A reader sent us a link to a poll in the Portland Oregonian. The question is whether the Portland Public Schools were right to pass up applying to get the federal funding. Good for Portland! Maybe the school system figured out that the money is not discretionary and that the mandates that come with RTTT [...]
America’s Favorite Parlour Game?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
What is America’s favorite parlour game? If you are talking about the average American, I don’t know though I would guess that parlour games have been replaced by watching TV. However, if you are talking about the wonks in conservative think tanks, a rare breed to be sure, I will share their secret: they are [...]
Credit-Rating Agency: Charter Schools Are Risky Investment
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
Well, we are into big-time business talk about education. For-profit colleges are losing market share. K12 Inc.’s stock price drops after Wells Fargo downgraded its rating in response to the poor performance of K12′s Colorado Virtual Academy, where the graduation rate is 22 percent. Now a rating agency finds that despite the passage of an [...]
Democracy for Sale?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
Somebody is dumping a lot of campaign cash into state and local races. Michael Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute is convinced that the teachers’ unions are the Evil Empire. He says that the unions play Goliath to the poor reformers’ puny David. He says the unions were responsible for the defeat of [...]
Students Who Disgrace Themselves in Public
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 3 days ago
Students for Education Reform at New York University and Columbia University plan a march to demand that the New York City United Federation of Teachers and the Bloomberg administration reach an agreement on test-based teacher evaluation. These groups are off-shoots of Democrats for Education Reform, the group founded by Wall Street hedge fund managers, the [...]
Why Cheat When You Are Winning?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Newark’s Robert Treat Academy is under investigation for possible cheating on state tests. This charter school has been highly praised by the media and politicians as “proof” that “poverty is not destiny.” As Jersey Jazzman points out, and as Bruce Baker has documented, the school stacks the deck by taking very small numbers of students [...]
EduShyster on the Michigan Plan to End Public Education As We Know It
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Just to show that great minds think alike, here is EduShyster’s description of the Michigan plan to end public education as we know it. The plan was designed by the deep thinkers at the free-market think tank called the Mackinac Center. She calls it a reform “turducken,” which is one reform wrapped inside another, all [...]
For-Profit Colleges in Trouble
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
No tears from this corner for the for-profit sector in higher education. It is losing market share and closing campuses as students figure out that the degree from a for-profit college is not entirely respectable. John Hechinger again proves he is at the top of his game as an education writer. He knows how to [...]
Michigan Plan to Dissolve School Districts
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
As readers of this blog know, Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan is determined to break up public education and encourage privatization as rapidly as possible. He has been relying on a group called the “Oxford Foundation” to devise his plans. As we now know is customary among corporate reformers, the group is named deceptively. it [...]
The Real Story Behind the Bridgeport Election
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
The recent election in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was a major setback for corporate-style “reform” in that city. The mayor launched a well-funded campaign to persuade voters to give up their democratic right to elect their school board and to give him control of the public schools. Miraculously, despite his huge advantage in money and power, the [...]
That Teeny Tiny Number of Irreplaceables
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
Bruce Baker is one of my favorite bloggers. He is smart and irreverent. He is not awed by big names. He actually was a teacher before becoming a researcher. He has the technical skill to crack the statistical analyses that others generate to make spurious claims. Unlike many with the same skill set, he is [...]
Help This Small Community By Signing Its Petition
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
The town of Scottsburg, Indiana, has fewer than 10,000 residents. There is a proposal before the City Council to open a charter school. This will split the town. Some public school parents have started a petition to ask the City Council and the Mayor not to open a charter school. Please sign the parents’ petition. [...]
Why Local School Boards Are Targeted for Destruction
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
A local school board in Florida rejected the application of a for-profit charter operator. The board said they had had a bad experience with the last charter school, which closed for low performance. They also knew that this applicant had some problems, financially and academically. When the Metro Nashville school board rejected the Great Hearts [...]
Teacher: Why I Won’t Return to Teach in Georgia Unless…
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
This teacher is responding to the post by the North Carolina teacher who quit his job rather than submit to unprofessional mandates and politically motivated directives: I am a 13 year teacher who recently left the United States (Georgia) to come teach overseas.. I don’t know if I can ever go back to the USA [...]
Thank You, G.F. Brandenburg
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
One of the bloggers I admire most is G.F. Brandenburg. Compared to me, he is a veteran blogger. He has been chronicling the foibles of “reform” since 2009. His blog revealed that Michelle Rhee’s claims of having been a miracle teacher were bogus. He has followed her career since she left D.C.; do a search [...]
The False Proxy Trap
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
I confess I never heard about Seth Godin. Then I read these interesting reflections and concluded I have to learn more about him. He is an author and a high-tech entrepreneur. He wrote the following wise thoughts, which are a direct hit on our current obsession with test scores. The scores are a proxy for [...]
DC Voucher Schools: No Accountability
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 4 days ago
The Washington Post looked closely at the DC voucher program and found a shocking lack of oversight or accountability. The reporters found that there was little or no oversight over curriculum, quality or standards, and parents got no information other than te schools’ advertising. “…Washington Post review found that hundreds of students use their voucher [...]
Unmasking Michelle Rhee’s Right-Wing Agenda
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
Daniel Denvir has been tracking the political activities of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst and learned that most of her support went to Republican candidates. She pretends to be a Democrat but in state after state, she has given big money to candidates who support privatization and anti-teacher legislation.. Rhee “poured money into state-level campaigns nationwide, winning [...]
NYC School Policy: Churn, Churn, Churn
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News doesn’t usually write about education, but when he does, he hits it out of the park. In this article, he interviews parents who can’t understand why their neighborhood school is being closed–again. It was closed and renamed in 2008, now it will be closed and renamed again. [...]
Are Teachers Unions Bad for Education?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
After several consecutive years of hearing that teachers’ unions are terrible, teachers’ unions are an obstacle to reform, teachers’ unions are greedy, it’s easy to cringe when the subject of unions comes up. I personally have gotten over that. I have come to realize that the war on unions is part of the larger war [...]
About That Bipartisan Consensus to Privatize Public Education
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
If ever evidence was needed about the bizarre mind meld between the Obama administration and the far-right of the Republican party, here it is. Secretary Arne Duncan is giving the keynote to Jeb Bush’s Excellence in Education summit in Washington, D.C. on November 28. Another keynote will be delivered to the same gathering of the [...]
Michigan Is On Its Way to Ending Public Education
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 5 days ago
Governor Rick Snyder must hate public education. Certainly his advisors do. He has some group of rightwing operatives who have pretentiously named themselves the “Oxford Foundation,” although they are not a foundation and they have nothing to do with Oxford University or Oxford Healthcare or Oxford anything. This GOP group issues reports on how to [...]
Why the Grassroots Will Win
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
People often ask me: How can parents and teachers hope to beat the big money that is buying elections in state and local races around the nation? What chance do we have when they can dump $100,000, $200,000, $500,000 into a race without breaking a sweat? True, they have a lot of money. But they [...]
“Payment-by-Results” in 1862!
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
Robin Alexander, who headed the Cambridge Primary Review in England, has been reading the posts on this blog. He was especially interested in our faux reformers’ love affair with paying teachers and schools to get higher test scores. He thought we might want to learn about the UK experience with “payment-by-results”: Payment by Results - [...]
Teacher: What the Public Needs to Know about Teaching
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
In response to a letter from someone who said that teachers have cushy jobs and should stop whining, this teacher wrote as follows: Many ignorant Americans think as you do about teachers and the teaching profession. I taught in both sectors–private and public and worked longer, harder hours in teaching than most people in the [...]
EduShyster Finds the Biggest Turkey Idea of School Reform
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
EduShyster has done it again. Imagine a conference on the freshest, boldest education idea of ever. Who would you want to hear from? Of course, those two ex-chancellors Rhee and Klein, who both had their chance and made no difference other than to introduce the concept of disruption to an entire school district. And here [...]
Poverty and Stress Can Damage Children’s Lives
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
The latest research studies from Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child demonstrate how “toxic stress” can severely damage children’s minds. Everyone needs to learn to deal with adversity, says Dr. Jack Shonkoff of the Harvard Center, and some stress is a good learning experience. But the conditions associated with living in poverty harms children’s [...]
Advice to a Mother about Common Core:
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
A mother in North Carolina wrote for advice. Her daughter in first grade is studying algebra. Her teacher said it was the Common Core. The mother is baffled. She asked for help. Here is an informed response: “I am responding to the blog entry from the mother in N.C. who is concerned about the Common [...]
Who Needs Poets? Why More Einsteins?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
Pat Buoncristiani was a teacher and principal of a school in U.S. for many years. She now lives in her native Australia. She raises important questions about how standardized testing, now ubiquitous, will affect creativity, curiosity, and critical thinking. You will like her blog. She cares more about learning to think than learning to take [...]
What Are You Going to Do to Change Obama’s Mind?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
Joe Bower asks the right question: “What are you doing to make Obama rethink his education policies?” Obama will never stand for election again. He is free to do what he wants. Congress has given him a free hand. He knows what is right for his daughters. He chose a great school with experienced teachers, [...]
If Baseball Were Like Race to the Top
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 6 days ago
I recently posted a hilarious item that asked what would happen if basketball leagues were run in accordance with the rules of No Child Left Behind. John Thompson asks what would Major League Baseball look like if it were conducted in accordance with the requirements of Race to the Top and the School Improvement Grants. [...]
Does Segregation Improve Test Scores?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
Remember when school segregation was considered a terrible thing? Maybe you are not old enough to remember. I am. I remember. I attended racially segregated schools in Houston in the 1940s and 1950s. It was not okay. The Supreme Court said it was wrong. No longer. EduShyster has discovered that racial segregation has become normal [...]
What Schools Should Do in Crisis Times
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
After the hurricane, Mayor Bloomberg was eager to reopen the city’s public schools as soon as possible for the 1.1 million children enrolled. He worried that they were “losing time” and had to get back to their studies, back to normal. The facts that many of the schools suffered damage, that many were turned into [...]
Will Tennessee Create an ALEC-Style Charter Board to Trump Local Boards?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
The right-wing group called ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) has model legislation to enable a governor to appoint a commission to authorize charter schools, thus bypassing those pesky local school boards that don’t want to bring privately managed schools to their local district. The local school boards are charged with improving their schools, not with [...]
The Boston Globe’s Mad Love Crush on Charters
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
EduShyster has done it again. This time she nails the Boston Globe. This is the Boston Globe’s dream as expressed by its lead education writer: “There’s a lot at stake in the takeover of the Gavin by UP Academy. If it succeeds at raising student achievement with an identical student population, then the main complaint [...]
Nebraska Joins the Honor Roll
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
This just in from a teacher in Nebraska. The state did not get any Race to the Top funding, and therefore didn’t “win” money that would cost them more to implement than they “won.” It is taking a “wait and see” approach to Common Core standards. It doesn’t want the U.S. Department of Education to [...]
Standards for 0-5?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
A reader wonders, when do we start assessing parents and caregivers? http://www.sde.ct.gov/sde/lib/sde/PDF/CCSS/PreK_ELA_Crosswalk.pdf http://www.sde.ct.gov/sde/lib/sde/PDF/CCSS/PreK_ELA_Crosswalk.pdf Let’s not laugh too hard. I posted the links above in response to Dr. Ravitch’s post called “What are we doing to the little ones?” The links take you to draft Connecticut documents relating to CCSS for preschoolers. The introduction states that [...]
Yet Another Trial of Merit Pay
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
Jersey Jazzman describes here the Newark teachers contract, which was just ratified. The central feature of the contract is merit pay. This particular gimmick is a fixation of billionaire Eli Broad, who calls the shots in the Garden State through Acting Commissioner Chris Cerf and Newark’s Superintendent Cami Anderson, both of whom were “trained” to [...]
How TFA Is Saving the World
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
You may have thought that the biggest problems facing the world were things like war, terrorism, poverty, and growing inequality. If you thought that, you are wrong. What is really needed in every country is an organization prepared to recruit a few dozen smart college graduates and groom them to take over the nation’s education [...]
Eduwonkette: Where Are You Now That We Need You?
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
The greatest education blogger ever was Eduwonkette. For some 22 months, the masked woman fired off sharp missives, dissecting bad ideas with hard data and incisive questions. She started her blog at Education Week in January 2007 and kept it going until October 2009, when she figuratively “hung up her cape.” Her stuff was spectacular, [...]
Yertel the Turtle In Detroit
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
The Detroit School Board voted to withdraw from the State’s Educational Achievement Authority after voters repeal the act granting broad powers to emergency managers. Seems that the people in Detroit think they should have something to say about what happens to their public schools and their children. They probably don’t like the idea of turning [...]
Children in Mississippi Are Helping Children in Long Island
dianerav at Diane Ravitch's blog - 1 week ago
This makes my day. Michael Vanveckhoven, a reader of this blog sent me a photo of children in Meridian, Mississippi, collecting warm hats and gloves for children in Rockville Center on Long Island in New York. Michael read here a note from high school principal Carol Burris about students whose homes were severely damaged by [...]